Call Lou Dobbs, the CNN hothead, who goes postal at the mention of Mexicans, and goes nuclear when talking about people in LA celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Here’s a news flash that will rock the mundo of the CNN gordito: The University Interscholastic League is recognizing mariachi as category in its statewide music competitions.

Yep, that UIL, the one that governs high school sports in Texas as well as a number of other statewide competitions. This is serious. When the UIL recognizes something, it’s like the word of Zeus in the world of Texas public school competitions.  The UIL doesn’t do anything lightly, so going the mariachi route is the official nod that playing traditional Mexican music in the state’s public schools is not only OK, but on equal footing with traditional, all-American contests in band, choir and football.

“The bottom line is we thought this would have a lot of statewide attractiveness,” said Richard Floyd, the UIL’s state director of music, in an article in the Houston Chronicle.

Good point there, Rich, since high schools and middle schools in the Rio Grande Valley have had mariachi music programs for many years now. Good to see the rest of Texas catching up. High schools in La Joya and Edcouch-Elsa, in particular, have been known for years for the quality of their mariachi programs, but really it’s all over the Valley. Go to one of these concerts at a Valley high school, and you won’t only see locals there, but Winter Texans, too.

It’s no wonder. It’s great music, and the way the kids get plugged into these classics is something to see and hear. A Jan. 28 article in the Chronicle points to just how much these youngsters enjoy being part of these programs.

“I can’t live without mariachi,” said 13-year-old Alex Solis, who is half Hispanic and half Asian.

“It helps us stay on the right path, and it does teach you more about yourself and your history,” said another 13-year-old, Sabrina Rosas, of being involved in mariachi at Patrick Henry Middle School in Sugarland.

What a delicious irony, no? Students at a school named after an American revolutionary era icon playing Mexican music in a program officially recognized by the state of Texas.

Take a bite out of that one, Lou, as Alex Solis in Sugarland, Texas, strums on his guitarron, the sweet sounds of mariachi filling up another band hall in the Lone Star state.

Here’s how Patrick Henry would put it in the 21st Century: Give me liberty or give me a guitarron. Either one sounds good to me.

Alas, with McCain dispatching GOP flip-flopper Mitt Romney in Florida’s key primary on Tuesday, the way is clear for the Arizona senator to have a fairly easy time of it on his way to the Republican nomination. The immigration issue that so boils the blood of the far right of the Republican Party is rapidly losing steam, with questions about the issue given only a passing glance at the latest GOP presidential debates. So much for the issue that was to define the GOP contest.

All of this hardly means that efforts have stopped to tighten the flow of people across the border so we can prevent a terrorist attack from the farm workers, landscapers, and hotel cleaning ladies who would do our country harm by working. No, thankfully, very soon Americans will need to show all sorts of identification for a simple jaunt across an international bridge, not that everyone is happy about it.

“We’re not going to stand for it,” one member of Congress recently told USA Today. “There will be such a tie-up at the border, it will be the worst the world has ever seen.”

A U.S. senator holds similar views, telling USA Today that the new cumbersome ID requirments are “unwise, ill-considered and counterproductive.”

The politicians with the thundering views on the new regs aren’t from these parts. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., is the member of Congress cited above, with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., questioning the wisdom of the new rules. All of which goes to show that for all of the noise on right-wing radio about the southern border, (i.e. the need to keep Mexicans out from contaminating our national identity), issues of commerce and business are also important on the U.S.-Canadian border as well.

Here’s the rub: Beginning Jan. 31, U.S. and Canadian citizens ages 19 and above will have to show a government ID and a second ID such as a birth certificate, or a government document indicating naturalization, citizenship or birth abroad.

In the mix of confusion about this issue, the feds tried to make some amends by saying the U.S. State Department will take applications for a new border crossing guard that will help facilitate routine back-and-forths across the bridges. After all of the recent long delays to get passports, I’m sure the application process for these crossing cards will go smoothly, no?

Meanwhile back at the bridges, a recent Government Accountability Office report says our federal government ought to put more time and money to improving ports of entry rather than policing remote stretches of the border. The GAO study reported that about half of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in America entered at a legal port of entry. Gee, does that mean spending more money on improving staffing and facilities at bridges and immigration offices would be resources better spent than building a costly but ineffective fence that is largely a symbolic barrier to ease the worries of Betty Lou in Iowa and Bobby Joe in Alabama that we’re finally doing something to keep Mexicans out?

Sealing the border is a dicey proposition. A simple fence will get the job done in the minds of our simplistic thinking friends on the far right, but the new GOP frontrunner, McCain of Arizona, knows better, as do we who actually live on the border. The same seems to be the case for our fellow Americans living up north who see business and commerce cross the northern border on a daily basis. At least our friends up north won’t have to put with a border fence of their own, being that Canadian immigrants won’t erode America’s national identity the way Mexicans do.

Neither border will ever be sealed, nor fully secured in the sense that the talk show crowd wants. It will be increasingly harder to get across, though. Better make sure you have all of your goverment-approved documents in tow, especially if you’re a Hispanic American. And while you’re at, make sure to put your 2-ounce tube of tooth paste and hand soap in a little plastic bag for inspectors as well, as is required at airports these days. Never know when a new regulation might pop up to protect us from the ominous threats posed by farms workers, landscapers and hotel cleaning ladies.

Paul Burka, the magazine’s senior editor, and one of this state’s more astute political observers, predicts that magic year will be 2018, and says it will be in the mold of a current youngish Latino state representative from Dallas that I’ve never heard of. That sounds good, 2018, which is only 10 years from today, but it sounds a bit ambitious to me.

Here’s some basic reasons behind that view. One, despite the fact Texas is trending Hispanic in its demographics, that portion of the state’s electorate is still small when compared to overall vote totals. The lowest voter turnout numbers, in percentage to total registered voters, are in border counties, plain and simple.

Second, and quite bluntly, a good many white voters still find it difficult to vote for a candidate who happens to be Hispanic or African-American. That dynamic makes it difficult for candidates of color in any high-profile political race. This narrative is being played out in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. In this view, Obama has run a campaign of dignity and balance, and one that is decidely broad in appeal, and non-racial in its composition.

And yet for all that Obama has done to run such a race, nagging doubts remain as to whether America is ready to elect a president who is African-American. A recent national poll shows that 94 percent of Americans say they are ready to vote for a presidential candidate who is African-American. That percentage slips to 71 percent when respondents are asked if their family members and friends are ready for such a candidacy. Only 54 percent believe that an African-American candidate will actually be elected president in 2008.

In other words, Americans are telling pollsters that they individually are ready to vote for a major presidential candidate who is black, but they believe a good many of the people they know will not, and even fewer of their fellow Americans are willing to do so.

Then there’s the political players at play. It has been widely thought Republicans would be the biggest impediments to the rising political fortunes of Hispanics and African-Americans. It is much harder to make that argument after watching the Clintons in action in South Carolina last week. The Billary presidential campaign, (that would be co-candidates Bill and Hillary Clinton), was quite shameful last week in its efforts to marginalize Obama as a “black” candidate in a number of different ways.

Big Dog Bill inferred last week that, yea, of course Obama was likely to win South Carolina since about half of the state’s Democratic voters are black. And then on his way out of the state on Saturday, Bill compared Obama’s impending South Carolina win to the 1984 and 1988 primary victories of Jesse Jackson in S.C., saying, in effect, that Barack’s blackness would be the only reason for the big win ahead.

The Clinton Machine’s bad behavior of recent weeks in playing the race card against Obama demonstrates vividly what entrenched political interests will do to dissuade the rise of a major candidate of color when such an ascension threatens their ambitions and plans. That such a strategy would come from Bill Clinton, of all people, who was formerly referred to as “first black president” for his supposed affinity for African-Americans, is especially appaling.

All of this comes back to our great state of Texas in imagining what sort of candidate who happens to be Hispanic could make a leap to the governor’s mansion. Speculation in recent years is that it would be a Tony Garza type, with this particular Tony being a Brownsville native who is a former Texas railroad commissioner, a Republican and good buddy of George W. Bush, and the current U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Political chisme had Tony coming back to Texas and running for guv or senator. Garza, however, married the richest woman in Mexico a few years back, and ask yourself this question: If you were married to a gazillionare would you bother to run for statewide office, or even work another day in your life?

Logic would say that such a breakthrough candidate would need to go the route of being the mayor of a large Texas city, or leap from being an attorney general or another notable statewide office. It’s hard to see such a candidate making such a big leap from the drudgery of the state legislature where politicians can be so badly blooded. A good part of Obama’s appeal is that he’s seen as being fresh and new. When’s the last time anyone saw a major figure from the Texas Legislature in such a way?

Of course, there was such a political figure about 20 years ago. His name is Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio, and he was every bit the political star before his insecurities and marital problems took him out of play. If a Hispanic is going to be elected governor of Texas in 2018, as Burka predicts, it almost surely will have to be a Republican, and if Tony G isn’t available, who will that person be?

I don’t see such a person on the horizon in the next 10 years, meaning Burka’s pick is likely about 10-to-20 years away from political reality. The first Hispanic governor in Texas will have to wait until the state becomes more Hispanic and more of them actually vote, along with Texas becoming more of a two-party state where white voters are more willing to consider a candidate of color for high statewide office.

Burka says it’ll be 2018. I’d go more with 2028 when some current middle schooler or high school student with a multi-racial background, (a la Obama), will rise from a prominent position in politics or business to make a breakthrough that will be long in coming.

Question #1: Does America want to:

A. Secure the border

B. Seal the border

C. Close the border

If you chose A, you may be a Republican presidential candidate. The “secure the border” answer is one often heard from GOP hopefuls these days. For example, John McCain, who was stung by some party faithful for his past support of comprehensive immigration reform, now says he “got the message.” McCain formerly supported a long and conditioned path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants living in our fair land, but now says he “got the message,” meaning “we must first secure the border.”

Now, there has been scant explaination as to when securing the border will officially be reached. Is it when the number of illegal immigrants, sorry, I meant to say illegal alien apprehensions reaches some sort of acceptable level, or is it when such apprehensions stop all together? Is it when we reach a certain number of Border Patrol agents? Is it when only white guys are found to be working at construction sites, farms, and in the kitchens of fancy restaurants?

Is it when we get some of our troops back from Iraq and station them along the border, (Canada too maybe?), to keep armed watch against all of those drywallers, farm workers and hotel cleaning ladies coming through?

We just don’t know because no one is defining when that magic moment comes when the border is secured. McCain is the closest I’ve heard. The Arizona senator says once he’s takes office as president that he will work closely with border governers, (would that include Minnesota and New York’s guvs as well?), and then at some point these governors will certify the border as being secure. Thank goodness.

If you chose answer B, seal the border, you are likely a conservative talk show host or caller to these shows. For example, Fox News’ Sean Hannity is always talking about “sealing the border,” and says this country ought to do “whatever it takes” to get that done. Hannity, who grew up on Long Island in New York, looks really cute in his blue jean jacket and boots when he roughs it in the wild while venturing from his broadcast booth in NYC to trek down to “the border” for some photo opps for his show.

Showing a vast understanding based on the 15 minutes he has spent on “the border,” Hannity regularly holds forth on how Jorge the construction worker and Linda the hotel cleaning lady are “violating our sovereignty” by crossing illegal into this country, (a misdemeanor by the way under current civil law), to do all sorts of dastardly things, like, build houses and clean hotel rooms.

In fairness to pugnacious Sean, all sorts of his talk show species regularly spout off about “sealing the border,” a place they haven’t been to or seen other than the television imagery of Mexicans being herded into the back of Border Patrol trucks. Sean & Co., don’t really define what “sealing the border” means or how they would do it. We can feel in the blanks, I guess. Doing “whatever it takes” sounds pretty strong, though. Maybe some of the returning troops from the surge in Iraq can be redeployed to Eagle Pass.

If you chose answer C, close the border, you may live in a small town in Iowa. During the recently concluded presidential campaigns for the GOP caucuses in Iowa, illegal immigration became issue #1 in a state that is 97 percent white in its people composition. The fact that a few thousand Hispanics now call Iowa home has unsettled some of the locals in Iowa who apparently aren’t used to that sort of overwhelming diversity. I mean, when you’re only 97 percent of the population, you can see where there is cause for concern.

Hence, the GOP candidates often heard the following line during their campaign stops in Iowa: “What are you, (insert presidential candidate here), going to do to close the border?” To which, McCain, Huckabee, Romney, etc., would go into the whole “secure the border” thing.

 Now, when an Iowan wants to “close the border” so he or she won’t to have see another Mexican in their state, does this mean that all international bridges should be closed, or that all commerce between the U.S. and Mexico should come to a complete halt, or that the affluent Monterrey crowd can no longer shop at La Plaza Mall in McAllen?

I don’t know but I think it works like this. First we secure the border with gobs more Border Patrol agents. Then we seal the border with armed military troops. And then we close the border all together, which would bring the expansion at the Mercedes mall to a screeching halt being that the DeLeon family from Nuevo Leon will be deprived of their free enterprise right to buy overpriced Ray Ban sunglasses in America.

But, you know, about 45 percent of illegal immigrants in America didn’t cross a border. They came in legally, but then overstayed their visas.

So it begs the question: When are we going to secure, seal and close the visa offices?

If it means eating at King Taco in East Los Angeles, hey, that’s not asking much. Hillary munched on a couple of beef tacos last week as she was escorted around East LA by the city’s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who ordered her the eats in SPANISH, (Tancredo, issue a Balkanization of America alert!). Yep, it’s time to pursue the much talked about Latino vote as the election season swings to states with lots of Americans who order Mexican plates at their favorite diners while crying over yet another Dallas Cowboy playoff loss.

The Clintons are insanely popular with Hispanics for reasons I don’t fully comprehend other than Latinos tend to vote Democratic and Bill and Hill are the biggest party icons at the moment. Bill has never been referred to as “the first Mexican president,” but he has been called “the first black president” a bunch of times because he’s a southern boy who has always had a comfortable rapport with African-Americans.

Still, no doubting the magic the Clintons have over Hispanics. A New York Times story on Saturday reported that a LA rally “packed with Hispanic women shrieked at seeing Mrs. Clinton.” They didn’t just clap. They shrieked. That may be, says one Las Vegas political leader, because as a woman Hillary packs a strong respect in the Hispanic community.

“The Hispanic community is very family oriented, and we respect our mothers,” said Ruben Kihuen, a Democratic assemblyman from Las Vegas. “A lot of middle-aged women see her, (Hillary), as a mother, a head of the household, and they can identify with this.”

Wow, just one more reason for Latinos to go ga-ga over the Clintons. Hillary reminds us of our mothers? Whoa, that’s too deep for me. And, besides, Hillary didn’t make me arroz-con-pollo as a kid, so I ain’t buying that one.

So, against this considerable cultural and political backdrop what chance does a cool, elegant African-American politician, (Barack Obama), have against The Clinton Machine? Probably, not a lot, but the dude is trying. Obama has racked up some important endorsements of his own such as Gloria Romero, a Democrat from East LA, and the state Senate majority leader, who knows her camp has a ways to go before denting the Clinton appeal in Latino circles.

What will it take? Obama is too cool to be seen as our Dad the way Hillary has supposedly taken over the motherly role, (can that be right because I still don’t get it). Romero is sure of what won’t work.

“I don’t think it’s eating tacos,” Romero said in the NY Times, (that’s a dig at Hillary in case you missed it). “We need to address what unites us.”

And what about the aspect of Obama, as a major presidential candidate who happens to be African-American, pursuing the Latino vote? The NY Times just came right out and asked that question in a page 1 story today, and it drew mixed reviews.

Some Hispanics, including a Natasha Carrillo, 20, of Los Angeles, were blunt in their assessments.

“Many Latinos are not ready for a person of color,” Carrillo told the Times. “I don’t think many Latinos will vote for Obama.”

That would be sad and unfortuanate and wouldn’t say much for Latinos, or any other group of Americans, for that matter, to decline to vote for someone because of their skin color or his or her last name. But that’s the reality, to some degree, and we all know it. The Clinton-Obama race is a historic matchup, the first of many such races in U.S. political history as America becomes more diverse and tolerant. Perhaps, and hopefully, this matchup will will bring down some more racial and cultural barriers along the way as Americans size up their political leaders.

For all of the dust-up of recent days between the Clinton and Obama camps over the legacy of Martin Luther King and the civil rights era, NY Times columnist David Brooks made an important point today.

“This dispute is going to be settled by the rising, and so far ignored, minority group,” Brooks wrote. “For all the current fighting, it’ll be Latinos who end up determining who gets the (Democratic) nomination.”

So, with the upcoming February primary in Florida fast approaching, Giuliani is going full tilt in the southern state in order to keep his presidential bid alive. The vote in populous southern Florida is critical, so Rudy has radio and TV ads broadcasting his message in the Miami area, and guess what? Some of the Rudy ads, in fact many of the ads, are in SPANISH.

I don’t usually go upper caps, but ain’t it something to see a leading Republican presidential candidate broadcasting campaign ads in SPANISH after all of the GOP bluster about building border fences, deporting illegal immigrants and sealing borders, blah, blah, blah.

 The anti-immigration bluster seems to be cooling among the surviving GOP prez candidates as they focus on other topics. Still, if Rudy and his political competitors really believed in all of the red-meat, anti-immigrant gospel they’ve been dishing to the party faithful, shouldn’t all of his ads be in English and not SPANISH?

Giuliani was quite friendly to immigrants of all types during his days as New York City’s mayor, praising their work ethic and contributions to his city. In that context, it’s not surprising that Rudy would go SPANISH in some of his Florida ads, but he better hope Betty Jo in Tulsa and Billy Bob in Spartanburg, S.C., don’t find out that Giuliani has gone Mexican in some of his sunshine state ads.

Actually, as the kids would say, Rudy is reaching out to the Cuban-American vote, which has long leaned Republican and likes purported tough guys like Giuliani. Rudy has bigger items on his plate right now than placating the hardline anti-immigrant wing of his party, with the chief concerns being holding off a surging John McCain and the emerging candidacy of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

The next Republican presidential nominee will come from one of the above three choices. Giuliani, McCain and Huckabee in past political lives have all acted like rational, compassionate human beings when it comes to the issue of immigration. Their general views on such a key issue puts them at odds with a noisy wing of their party who put their opposition to more immigration into the U.S. - legal or illegal - as their top concern, what with all of those Mexicans tarnishing American culture and violating our sovereignity.

But I wonder. If the anti-immigrant noise we’ve heard so much about in recent years is driving the GOP, why is it that all the of Republican presidential candidates of that ilk have gotten no where in their campaign bids?  Tom Tancredo, the leading GOP demagogue on immigration, couldn’t even get to 1 percent in national polls. Mean-spirited Duncan Hunter, the self-described king of border fences, peaked at just north of 1 percent, and mumbling Fred Thompson has bored everyone to tears, if not indifference.

Meanwhile, the GOP king of pandering, Mitt Romney, is fading fast after airing a number of attack ads in Iowa and New Hampshire in which he aggressively went after McCain and Huckabee for being too friendly to immigrants, you know, the whole amnesty canard. So that leaves McCain, who reminds GOP crowds that immigrants are God’s children, too. And then there’s Huckabee, who as governor of Arkansas, spoke out forcefully against the right-wing immigrant bashers in his state, and of course, the immigrant-friendly Mayor Rudy.

Here’s what is becoming apparent. The strident anti-immigration crowd isn’t even a majority in their own party. They occupy, at most, 15 to 20 percent of the American electorate, but it seems like more since they all migrate to talk radio shows to yak about the foreign invaders ruining America. If these yakkers are so strong, so powerful, how is it that not one of their guys got anywhere in the Republican presidential race?

This development led one of the Fox News talking heads to ask Tancredo recently if the whole immigration issue was essentially dead, becoming largely irrelevant to the surviving field of GOP candidates. The ever cheerful Tancerdo said he hoped not because the Balkanization of America is just around the corner, the sort of collapse that fellow nativist Pat Buchanan warned was about to tear the U.S. apart 25 years ago. Gee, I guess America survived that crisis pretty well.

So, I’d say to Rudy, go ahead with your campaign ads in Spanish. The power of the paper tiger that is the angry, anti-immigrant/talk radio nation is receding faster than the hair on Fred Thompson’s head.  Viva Rudy! Si se puede con Giuliani! Oh, wait a minute, isn’t Barack Obama using that line?

Circus Chimera, whose shows have been mainstays in South Texas for any number of yeras, has canceled its itinerary for the first time in its 10-year history. It isn’t a lack of performing members - human or of the animal variety - that is shutting the circus down. Nope, it’s that immigration crisis you hear about from the political types that got the job done, or this case didn’t get the jobs done.

The collective inability of our fearless leaders in Washington to reform our nation’s immigration system to fit economic and business realities did Circus Chimera in. In one piece of a complicated political puzzle that Washington can’t solve, a key provision in a  temporary worker visa program expired in September 2007, and was never renewed.

The net result is that the circus company was not able to bring in the temporary workers it needed to do such necessary jobs as setting up benches and selling tickets. The circus company has always gone the legal route, participating in the H-2B visa program in bringing in the temporary and seasonal workers it needed, (from Mexico), but this year without an extension of the program, Circus Chimera could not go on.

“If employers can’t secure visas through a legal route, then they’ll have to hire undocumented workers if they want to stay in business,” said John Meredith, who works with the the amusement industry on a national level in matters involving employment issues.

Meredith, in making his comments last week to The Brownsville Herald, noted that it’s not only the smaller shows that will be affected by immigration stalemate in Washington, but the larger productions as well, such as the Houston Livestock Show. Meredith predicts the Houston show will be significantly smaller this year due to the lack of legal workers once provided by the visa program.

The U.S. economy has always had a need for immigrant workers. There is no shame in stating such a basic fact, so it ought to be a logical progression for our federal government to create the necessary legal slots for workers to be gainfully employed in the various industries where such workers are needed.

But when dealing with immigration, the matters of race, culture and language kick in, so the simple matter of having enough circus workers, for example, becomes a complicated venture. If one states that he or she is not against immigration, just illegal immigration, then what should be the problem with a Circus Chimera going through the proper legal channels to employ the workers it needs?

Such is the chaos of the immigration issue in this country right now that the political supersedes the practical, hurting businesses that simply ask the federal government to establish basic visa programs that will allow them to operate by the rules and continue their legitimate business ventures.

Seal the border? That’s the cry of immigration restrictionists in exotic locales like Iowa and New Hampshire, but they have not a clue of how such a thing could be done. Nor they have any idea of the volume of business and commerce that crosses both of our borders - to the north as well as the south - and how important that flow is to the lives and livelihoods of many good Americans.